Oracle 11g Backward compatibility with older oracle releases

Question

Our organization is planning to upgrade its most of the oracle servers & clients to 11g Release 2.

But one of our client system is still using oracle 8i installation.

Can we able to access the objects of Oracle 8i from oracle 11g client?

Some blogs says that it should work and other say it won't.

Can anybody faced any issue with such configuration.

One of the senior dba told us that oracle only supports backward compatibility of 2 versions earlier to current version. Assuming this fact we shouldn't been able to access database objects running on oracle version 8.

Kindly help.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

We had to revert to Oracle 10 client (10.1, I believe) in order to connect to an Oracle 8 database. If there is a way to do it using 11.2, I'd like to be schooled.

EDIT: 10.2 will work. Here's the official word:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/windows/install10202-083849.html

"Access to an Oracle Database Server (Oracle8i Release 3 or later)"

And as of 11.1, you're out of luck:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/windows/install11106-087844.html

"Access to an Oracle Database Server (Oracle9i Release 2 or later)"

Answer 2

Check out MyOracleSupport

Subject: Client / Server / Interoperability Support Between Different Oracle Versions Doc ID: 207303.1

It won't go directly.

Answer 3

Oracle doesn't even list version 8 in any compatibility tables on their web site. We verified that current (11g R2) JDBC drivers from Oracle do not work with Oracle 8 database sources. It means that it is not possible to access Oracle 8 databases from the latest version of Oracle SQL Developer because it is using JDBC driver.

While there is a slim chance to be able to access Oracle 8 from some other Oracle 11g client, I would not bet my business on that.